Re: [PATCH 2.6.19 5/5] fs: freeze_bdev with semaphore not mutex

["Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>]

On Monday, 13 November 2006 00:30, David Chinner wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 12, 2006 at 06:43:10PM +0000, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > > > Okay, so you claim that sys_sync can stall, waiting for administator?
> > > > 
> > > > In such case we can simply do one sys_sync() before we start freezing
> > > > userspace... or just more the only sys_sync() there. That way, admin
> > > > has chance to unlock his system.
> > > 
> > > Well, this is a different story.
> > > 
> > > My point is that if we call sys_sync() _anyway_ before calling
> > > freeze_filesystems(), then freeze_filesystems() is _safe_ (either the
> > > sys_sync() blocks, or it doesn't in which case freeze_filesystems() won't
> > > block either).
> > > 
> > > This means, however, that we can leave the patch as is (well, with the minor
> > > fix I have already posted), for now, because it doesn't make things worse a
> > > bit, but:
> > > (a) it prevents xfs from being corrupted and
> > 
> > I'd really prefer it to be fixed by 'freezeable workqueues'.
> 
> I'd prefer that you just freeze the filesystem and let the
> filesystem do things correctly.

In fact _I_ agree with you and that's what we have in -mm now.  However, Pavel
apparently thinks it's too invasive, so we are considering (theoretically, for
now) a "less invasive" alternative.

> > Can you
> > point me into sources -- which xfs workqueues are problematic?
> 
> AFAIK, its the I/O completion workqueues that are causing problems.
> (fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_buf.c) However, thinking about it, I'm not
> sure that the work queues being left unfrozen is the real problem.
> 
> i.e. after a sync there's still I/O outstanding (e.g. metadata in
> the log but not on disk), and because the kernel threads are frozen
> some time after the sync, we could have issued this delayed write
> metadata to disk after the sync. With XFS, we can have a of queue of
> thousands of metadata buffers for delwri, and they are all issued
> async and can take many seconds for the I/O to complete.
> 
> The I/O completion workqueues will continue to run until all I/O
> stops, and metadata I/O completion will change the state of the
> filesystem in memory.
> 
> However, even if you stop the workqueue processing, you're still
> going to have to wait for all I/O completion to occur before
> snapshotting memory because having any I/O complete changes memory
> state.  Hence I fail to see how freezing the workqueues really helps
> at all here....

The changes of the memory state by themselves are handled correctly anyway.

The problem is the state of memory after the resume must be consistent with
the data and metadata on disk and it will be consistent if there are no
changes to the on-disk data and metadata made during the suspend
_after_ the suspend image has been created.

Also, the on-disk data and metadata should be sufficient to recover the
filesystem in case the resume fails (but that's obvious).
 
> Given that the only way to track and block on these delwri metadata
> buffers is to issue a sync flush rather than a async flush, suspend
> has to do something different to guarantee that we block until all
> those I/Os have completed. i.e. freeze the filesystem.
> 
> So the problem, IMO, is suspend is not telling the filesystem
> to stop doing stuff and so we are getting caught out by doing
> stuff that suspend assumes won't happen but does nothing
> to prevent.
> 
> > > (b) it prevents journaling filesystems in general from replaying journals
> > > after a failing resume.
> 
> This is incorrect.  Freezing an XFS filesystem _ensures_ that log
> replay occurs on thaw or a failed resume.  XFS specifically dirties
> the log after a freeze down to a consistent state so that the
> unlinked inode lists get processed by recovery on thaw/next mount.

Okay, so I was referring to ext3 and reiserfs.

Greetings,
Rafael


-- 
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
		R. Buckminster Fuller

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